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I Painted Something with Claude Code (Is It Painting? Idk)

4 min read#ai#art

I saw something. I wanted to try it.

An aurora borealis, drawn in code by Claude. Thousands of short dry strokes, a tiny red cabin by the water. @devteamdrew posted it.

That’s pretty cool, I thought. I sent it via Telegram to my to-do list, with the comment: “What can we draw together?”

Later I opened Claude Code and thought… what would we paint?

My year.

Lush, green, and some harsh betonlit. concreteConcrete. Here the megacities, and the grind that sits next to all the green.

I typed the brief:

I want an abstract painting in my “style” that embodies this year. I want it to be lush, green but also some harsh betonlit. concreteConcrete. Here the megacities, and the grind that sits next to all the green. in it. Its a worldwide travel with a feeling of unlimited productivity and also a lot of love.

The green is nature. The betonlit. concreteConcrete. Here the megacities, and the grind that sits next to all the green. is the megacities, and the fight between freedom and productivity, “which actually can be both”. No timeline. “its in itself a whole”.

IMPORTANT: it shouldn’t look like the aurora image. “It should look like what i draw and AMAZING”.

Claude went through my weekly reviews and turned the year into one row per week: where I was, travel, work, how much green, how much concrete.

Screenshots and “bit lower”

I didn’t touch the code once. I typed, looked at what came back, sent screenshots, typed again.

Claude painted the first rounds on its own and showed me round 8. My answer:

too detailed. too little painting. too strict in the “differentiation” and also too near green to my old images

Fewer strokes after that. Bigger, wetter, a new green. On round 14 I said: “…the direction i think that works.”

Progress card: 15 rounds in a grid, from a dark green filter look in round 1 through scribbles, big strokes, the first drawings and words, to round 37, with the final painting large on the right.
Round 1 to the final.

Then I wanted things on top. Objects from the year, “frechlit. cheekyCheeky, a bit insolent. A drawing that talks back. / kantigelit. edgyAngular, rough-edged. Lines that don't care about being smooth. / rough”. And words that define the year “but are not 1:1 descriptive”. Claude drew them in oil stick: a scooter, a boxing glove, bread, a plane, a deer, mountains, a building, a tree and some catchphrases.

“we are a good team.”

It looked too digital. So a wetter brush, a real scanned linen canvas, spatter, drips. The same painting in oil and in acrylic.

Then I let it research, and it found Mixbox, a library that mixes colours the way paint does, not the way light does. Acrylic with Mixbox won.

Well, why only my critique? We could add someone to the team.

“Show it to an art critic.” A fresh AI with only the brief and the images.

The verdict: “a strong wallpaper, not a strong painting”. Fair. I agreed. Back to painting.

Then some reorganizing, all by screenshot. “this tree feels weird maybe smaller and top left?” “no more monday bit lower”. “te quiro on top”. “put the m here”. “hedgehog a tiny bit more up and even tinier right”. The tally moved onto the concrete, like days counted on a cell wall.

Last ask: a version where we’d go “wow no way it was drawn by a computer”.

“yes its amazing.”

37 rounds. About 3 hours, from the tweet to the last render.

The final painting: big green acrylic strokes on the left push against grey and black concrete slabs on the right, with pink strokes between them and bare linen at the lower left. Rough oil-stick drawings and words sit on top: TE QUIERO in orange, PULL, MÁS ALLÁ, OPEN LAND, GOLDEN CAGE crossed out, NO MORE MONDAYS, a plane, a building, a scooter, a tally.
2026. Code + Daniel “Acrylic on linen canvas, oil stick”. Painted with code.

I don’t know if it is painting or art or whatever.

But I like it. It was fun.